Article from the Hayling Island Horticultural Society
As the night’s draw in and we spend more time indoors, there are still plenty of ways your garden can still be an interesting place to look at and spend time in. There are several ways you can enhance your garden and here are a few ideas.
Using pots to make a seasonal display of interest and colour, placed where you can see them is a good start. Cyclamen and heathers make a lovely combination and you can also use pansies, hellebores and different types of ivy. Use an evergreen plant for structure and plant around it and don’t put the pot in a saucer so it becomes waterlogged. Even the pots themselves can be painted with a water-based paint to give a splash of colour. There are a variety of plants that retain their silver or grey foliage all winter including Silver Bush which is a compact spreading shrub with shiny leaves or some types of Artemesia – more commonly known as Wormwood. Grasses are also an option such as Festuca Glauca (Blue Oat Grass), but there are many others to choose from.
You could consider moving some winter flowering shrubs into pots for winter so they are more prominent. They often spend the winter un-noticed at the back of the borders! Examples of these are Daphnes, Mahonias, Sarcococca (Christmas Box) and Viburnums.
Obviously leaving as much of the summer planting as you can (spent seed heads and rose-hips for example) will add interest and will be appreciated by the wildlife in your garden.
If you have wide window sills, or a balcony, you can plant up displays that can make a beautiful display from indoors. Thinking ahead to next year, all these containers can by underplanted with bulbs ready to burst into colour as Spring approaches.
Cutting back your evergreen plants into a formal shape can add interest but if you prefer and more relaxed look, you can try ‘cloud pruning’ which is a Japanese method of training trees and shrubs into shapes resembling clouds. This works well with plants with more defined branches such as box, pine, yew or privet. Have a look round your garden to see if you have something that might work with this style of pruning or just create your own shapes!
Finally to make sure you can see the results of your efforts, add some garden lighting or train some fairy lights around larger plants or garden ornaments, to create a magical night time effect.
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